Archive for September 23rd, 2009

Shady Deal Showered Top Blue Dog With Cash Rep. Mike Ross has been one of the leading opponents of health care reform in Congress. Guess who coincidentally sold property to a pharmacy chain for hundreds of thousands more than it was worth? Ka-ching! —PS ProPublica: “You can buy half the town for $420,000,” said Adam Guthrie, chairman of the county Board of Equalization and the only licensed real estate appraiser in Prescott. But the $420,000 was just the beginning of what Ross and his pharmacist wife, Holly, made from the sale of Holly’s Health Mart. The owner of USA Drug, Stephen L. LaFrance Sr., also paid the Rosses $500,000 to $1 million for the pharmacy’s assets and paid Holly Ross another $100,001 to $250,000 for signing a non-compete agreement. Those numbers, which Ross listed on the financial disclosure reports he files as a member of Congress, bring the total value of the transaction to between $1 million and $1.67 million. And that’s not counting the $2,300 campaign contribution Ross received from LaFrance two weeks after the sale closed. Read more Click here to see Rep. Ross’ response (beneath the photograph on the ProPublica page). READ THE WHOLE ITEM

Rep. Mike Ross has been one of the leading opponents of health care reform in Congress. Guess who coincidentally sold property to a pharmacy chain for hundreds of thousands more than it was worth? Ka-ching!? —PS

ProPublica:

“You can buy half the town for $420,000,” said Adam Guthrie, chairman of the county Board of Equalization and the only licensed real estate appraiser in Prescott.

But the $420,000 was just the beginning of what Ross and his pharmacist wife, Holly, made from the sale of Holly’s Health Mart. The owner of USA Drug, Stephen L. LaFrance Sr., also paid the Rosses $500,000 to $1 million for the pharmacy’s assets and paid Holly Ross another $100,001 to $250,000 for signing a non-compete agreement. Those numbers, which Ross listed on the financial disclosure reports he files as a member of Congress, bring the total value of the transaction to between $1 million and $1.67 million.

And that’s not counting the $2,300 campaign contribution Ross received from LaFrance two weeks after the sale closed.

Forget Religion, Settlers See a Bargain Roughly 2.4 percent of the Israeli population has managed to hijack the peace process by moving into settlements in Palestinian territory. So what drives these people? It may have less to do with religion and more to do with the low cost of living on occupied land. Consider Shelly Allon, an art therapist who found a steal beyond the 1967 borders. —PS Christian Science Monitor: She and her husband, Jeff, an artist, had lived together in Israel for many years before returning to the US to live in Philadelphia for 11 years. They returned to Jerusalem a year ago and discovered that an affordable home there to house them and most of their eight children – the youngest is 7 and the oldest, 22, is a student at the University of Pennsylvania – proved impossible. So they took the leap, buying a five-bedroom, multistory house for $210,000 – a quarter of the cost of an equivalent apartment in Jerusalem. Read more READ THE WHOLE ITEM

Roughly 2.4 percent of the Israeli population has managed to hijack the peace process by moving into settlements in Palestinian territory. So what drives these people? It may have less to do with religion and more to do with the low cost of living on occupied land.

Consider Shelly Allon, an art therapist who found a steal beyond the 1967 borders.? —PS

Christian Science Monitor:

She and her husband, Jeff, an artist, had lived together in Israel for many years before returning to the US to live in Philadelphia for 11 years. They returned to Jerusalem a year ago and discovered that an affordable home there to house them and most of their eight children – the youngest is 7 and the oldest, 22, is a student at the University of Pennsylvania – proved impossible.

So they took the leap, buying a five-bedroom, multistory house for $210,000 – a quarter of the cost of an equivalent apartment in Jerusalem.

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Method in Madness I’ve been wondering whether there’s any rationality at all to Republican strategy now. Sometimes the leadership, if that’s the right word, embrace the spasms of their farthest-gone crazies, as when Chuck Grassley endorses Glenn Beck, the militias tote guns to…

Coming To Grips With Columbine When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people in Columbine, Colorado, the American psyche received the sort of blunt trauma that psychologists love to learn from. Except: nobody was looking. The focus, instead, was on the parents that…

KING: I don’t really go back and re-live that sort of thing. Some of the big votes that I’ve thought about, some of the jury’s still out. And at this point, maybe I’d answer that question another way, probably the singular vote that stands out that went against the grain, and it turns out to be the best vote that I cast, was my “no” vote to the $51.5 billion to [Hurricane] Katrina. That probably was my best vote. But as far as doing something different again, I don’t know.

King was one of just 11 members of Congress to vote against the $52 billion aid package. (It passed unanimously in the Senate.) Media Matters Action Network’s Matt Finkelstein writes, “Katrina killed 1,464 in Louisiana alone and uprooted the lives of countless others all over the gulf region. Yet, King says this was his ‘best’ moment in Congress. Not fighting for ‘conservative principles’ like smaller government, lower taxes, or a strong national defense — no, he’s most proud of opposing relief for victims of a catastrophe.”

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Daily Dose: Live Blogging the Senate Finance Markup 4:49 p.m. | Markup Heats Up Things got a bit heated just now in the hearing room, generated from an unlikely source: the by-the-numbers, just-the-facts-ma’am director of the Congressional Budget Office, Doug Elmendorf. Asked by Olympia Snowe how many people the CBO was estimating would pay a pena…

Federal Ban on Flavored Cigarettes Takes Effect Federal officials said Tuesday that they hope a new ban against cigarettes flavored to taste like sweet foods will cut down on the number of children and young adults who pick up the smoking habit.

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On Sept. 11th, 2001 George Bush said he would catch bin Laden dead or alive.
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The Hollywood Liberal started in 2004 at the height of the Bush Administration madness in America.
We were inspired by the late great Bartcop.com. The very first thing I did when the site started was to get arrested at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. My arrest at the start of a march from The World Trade Center was later ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. On New Years Eve 2014 the case was finally settled, with a judge awarding a class action suit that I was part of over $26 Million. I posted daily on the blog up until the end of The Bush error, and the site is now run as a history of the whole fiasco. Feel free to browse the old postings, pictures, & comics (an HL favorite) It reveals the twisted history of the times. Thanks H.L.